From Snowden To Russia-gate - The CIA And The Media

The promotion of the alleged Russian election hacking in certain media may have grown from the successful attempts of U.S. intelligence services to limit the publication of the NSA files obtained by Edward Snowden.

In May 2013 Edward Snowden fled to Hongkong and handed internal documents from the National Security Agency (NSA) to four journalists, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian and separately to Barton Gellman who worked for the Washington Post. Some of those documents were published by Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian, others by Barton Gellman in the Washington Post. Several other international news site published additional material though the mass of NSA papers that Snowden allegedly acquired never saw public daylight.

In July 2013 the Guardian was forced by the British government to destroy its copy of the Snowden archive.

In August 2013 Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for some $250 million. In 2012 Bezos, the founder, largest share holder and CEO of Amazon, had already a cooperation with the CIA. Together they invested in a Canadian quantum computing company. In March 2013 Amazon signed a $600 million deal to provide computing services for the CIA.

In October 2013 Pierre Omidyar, the owner of Ebay, founded First Look Media and hired Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. The total planned investment was said to be $250 million. It took up to February 2014 until the new organization launched its first site, the Intercept. Only a few NSA stories appeared on it. The Intercept is a rather mediocre site. Its management is said to be chaotic. It publishes few stories of interests and one might ask if it ever was meant to be a serious outlet. Omidyar has worked, together with the U.S. government, to force regime change onto Ukraine. He had strong ties with the Obama administration.

Snowden had copies of some 20,000 to 58,000 NSA files. Only 1,182 have been published. Bezos and Omidyar obviously helped the NSA to keep more than 95% of the Snowden archive away from the public. The Snowden papers were practically privatized into trusted hands of Silicon Valley billionaires with ties to the various secret services and the Obama administration.

The motivation for the Bezos and Omidyar to do this is not clear. Bezos is estimated to own a shameful $90 billion. The Washington Post buy is chump-change for him. Omidyar has a net worth of some $9.3 billion. But the use of billionaires to mask what are in fact intelligence operations is not new. The Ford Foundation has for decades been a CIA front, George Soros' Open Society foundation is one of the premier "regime change" operations, well versed in instigating "color revolutions".

It would have been reasonable if the cooperation between those billionaires and the intelligence agencies had stopped after the NSA leaks were secured. But it seems that strong cooperation of the Bezos and Omidyar outlets with the CIA and others continue.

The Interceptburned a intelligence leaker, Realty Winner, who had trusted its journalists to keep her protected. It smeared the President of Syria as neo-nazi based on an (intentional?) mistranslation of one of his speeches. It additionally hired a Syrian supporter of the CIA's "regime change by Jihadis" in Syria. Despite its pretense of "fearless, adversarial journalism" it hardly deviates from U.S. policies.

The Washington Post, which has a much bigger reach, is the prime outlet for "Russia-gate", the false claims by parts of the U.S. intelligence community and the Clinton campaign, that Russia attempted to influence U.S. elections or even "colluded" with Trump.

Just today it provides two stories and one op-ed that lack any factual evidence for the anti-Russian claims made in them.

In Kremlin trolls burned across the Internet as Washington debated options the writers insinuate that some anonymous writer who published a few pieces on Counterpunch and elsewhere was part of a Russian operation. They provide zero evidence to back that claim up. Whatever that writer wrote (see list at end) was run of the mill stuff that had little to do with the U.S. election. The piece then dives into various cyber-operations against Russia that the Obama and Trump administration have discussed.

A second story in the paper today is based on "a classified GRU report obtained by The Washington Post." It claims that the Russian military intelligence service GRU started a social media operation one day after the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was illegally removed from his office in a U.S. regime change operation. What the story lists as alleged GRU puppet postings reads like normal internet talk of people opposed to the fascist regime change in Kiev. The Washington Post leaves completely unexplained who handed it an alleged GRU report from 2014, who classified it and how, if at all, it verified its veracity. To me the piece and the assertions therein have a strong odor of bovine excrement.

An op-ed in the very same Washington Post has a similar smell. It is written by the intelligence flunkies Michael Morell and Mike Rogers. Morell had hoped to become CIA boss under a President Hillary Clinton. The op-ed (which includes a serious misunderstanding of "deterrence") asserts that Russia never stopped its cyberattacks on the United States:

Russia’s information operations tactics since the election are more numerous than can be listed here. But to get a sense of the breadth of Russian activity, consider the messaging spread by Kremlin-oriented accounts on Twitter, which cybersecurity and disinformation experts have tracked as part of the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy.

The author link to this page which claims to list Twitter hashtags that are currently used by Russian influence agents. Apparently the top issue Russia's influence agents currently promote is "#merrychristmas".

When the authors claim Russian operations are "more numerous than can be listed here" they practically admit that they have not even one plausible operation they could cite. Its simply obfuscation to justify their call for more political and military measures against Russia. This again to distract from the real reasons Clinton lost the election and to introduce a new Cold War for the benefit of weapon producers and U.S. influence in Europe.

None of the Russia-gate stories so far has held up to scrutiny. There is no proof at all, nor reasonable evidence, that Russia interfered in elections in the U.S. or elsewhere. There is no evidence of "collusion" with the Trump campaign.

The people who promote the "Russian influence" nonsense are political operatives or hacks. Take for example Luke Harding of the Guardian who just published a book titled Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win. He was taken apart in a Real Newsinterview (vid) about the book. The interviewer pointed out that there is absolutely no evidence in the book to support its claims. When asked for any proof for his assertion Harding defensively says that he is just "storytelling" - in other words: its fiction. Harding earlier wrote a book about Edward Snowden which was a similar sham. Julian Assange called it "a hack job in the purest sense of the term". Harding is also known as plagiarizer. When he worked in Moscow he copied stories and passages from the now defunctExile, run by Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames. The Guardian had to publish an apology.

The Mexican government controls the media by buying an immense amount of advertisement. It thus guarantees income as long as its political line is followed. The U.S. government has its own ways of controlling the media. In the 1950s to 1970s the CIA ran Operation Mockingbird which gave it control over much of the news and opinion output in U.S. media. During that time up to 400 main stream journalists were working for the CIA.

The method of control has likely changed. The handling of the Snowden affair lets one assume that the CIA induces billionaires to buy up media and to implement the CIA's favored policies through them. We do not know what the billionaires get for their service. The CIA surely has many ways to let them gain information on their competition or to influence business regulations in foreign countries. One hand will wash the other.

James Clapper as Director of National Intelligence, John Brennan as CIA head and James Comey from the FBI "assessed" that Russia influenced the U.S. presidential election. Annex B of their report, which hardly any report bothered to mention, read:

Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation and precedents.

That sentence is the core of Russia-gate. There are lots of claims, assertions and judgments but no proof at all that any of the alleged Russian influence really happened.

It is probably due to the undue influence of the intelligence services that media have adopted that Annex B standard fro themselves. With regards to Russia (and other issues) assertions are now enough - there is no need to investigate, to find the truth or to verify claims.

How will that system work if an accident happens, some jet gets shot down and the issue escalates. Will there be any reporter left in the main stream media who is allowed to ask real questions?

If what you allege is true about Greenwald and the Intercept, then why hasn’t Snowden spoken out about it yet? Surely he would have said something about the Intercept and Greenwald keeping important stories buried by now. Yet, as far as I can tell, he has a good relationship with Greenwald. I find it hard to believe hat a man who literally gave up everything he had in life to leak important docs would remain silent for so long about a publishing cover up. I don’t really like the Intercept and I think your analysis of its content is accurate, but I do find it hard to believe that the NSA docs were “bought” back by the CIA.

I am pretty sure that Snowden still work for the CIA.
Why ? His support for the Signal app who is backed by CIA since the beginning : https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-crypto-keepers-levine
And when i saw his new application Haven, it is smelling at 100 % a surveillance tool disguised as a privacy protection tool... it's exactly a CIA mentality. If he could have done anything useful at a given moment, now I
I have no more confidence in him.

I sense The Duran and Zero Hedge are suspect for readers of this site, but however they may be seen as biased for Trump, they continually broadcast the sham the Mueller investigation has become. Today Alexander Mercouris, to me one of the best reporters on this matter additional to b, indicates the Mueller investigation will delay and stall with this and that until the 2018 congressional elections, with the Dems presuming these elections will be won by Democrats, which will take the heat off Mueller's show by current Repubs led by Nunes--now shifting to investigate Clinton.

Why there is not more attention to the outright sham of the investigation is not clear to me. The Mueller case re election peddling rests entirely on the Steele dossier, now shown to be false. Instead, Mueller is going after unrelated matters in Trump re Russian business deals, or matters taking place AFTER the election, or stupidly investigating Jill Stein for attending a dinner with Putin present. Anything Russia is gobbled down by automatic demonizing as "them Russian bastards did it Oh for sure." Trump tweets and complains but apparently does nothing to create a new prosecutor going after Clinton, where the investigation should focus, possibly because Mueller is continually miscalculating and the near collapse of what the committee is doing.

I don't comment on all this as a fan of Trump. Far be it. I'm very critical of Trump as essentially incompetent, an egotist, a foolhardy war-monger, and indeed I'll go with Tillerson's "fucking moron" assessment. But to concentrate simply on Trump, as moderate previous "liberals" are doing, is to ignore the other half of the problem in the corruption that is the current Washington. I want to see the farce of the Mueller investigation get more attention, and thank you b, for bringing it up here.

e: Sid2 | Dec 26, 2017 12:58:36 PM | 12
I agree that Zero Hedge has increasingly become an outlet for articles that in one way or another prop up the narratives of the deep state (as well as incorporating ridiculous amounts of advertising). Lately I have begun to wonder if any sort of unbiased news source will ever be available, or is that a creature than only exists in the minds of the naive and indoctrinated?

If what you allege is true about Greenwald and the Intercept, then why hasn’t Snowden spoken out about it yet?
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My understanding is that early on, Snowden placed his trove of documents in the exclusive care of Glenn Greenwald and his associates. Although Snowden has since become a public figure in his own right, and his opinions on state-security events and issues are solicited, as far as I know Snowden has no direct responsibility for managing the material he downloaded.

I haven't followed Snowden closely enough to know how familiar he may be with the contents of the reported "20,000 to 58,000 NSA files" turned over to GG/Omidyar. Snowden presumably took pains to acquire items of interest in his cache as he accumulated classified material, but even if he has extraordinary powers of recall he may not remember precisely what remains unreleased.

FWIW, I was troubled from the first by one of the mainstays of GG's defense, or rationale, when it became clear that he was the principal, and perhaps sole, executive "curator" of the Snowden material. In order to reassure and placate nervous "patriots"-- and GG calls himself a "patriot"-- he repeatedly emphasized that great care was being taken to vet the leaked information before releasing it.

GG's role as whistleblower Snowden's enabler and facilitator was generally hailed uncritically by progressive-liberals and civil-liberties advocates, to a point where public statements that should've raised skeptical doubts and questions were generally passively accepted by complacent admirers.

Specifically, my crap detectors signaled "red alert" early on, when Greenwald (still affiliated with "The Guardian", IIRC) took great pains to announce that his team was working closely with the US/UK governments to vet and screen Snowden's material before releasing any of it; GG repeatedly asserted that he was reviewing the material with the relevant state-security agencies to ensure that none of the released material would compromise or jeopardize government operatives and/or national security.

WTF? Bad enough that Greenwald was requiring the world to exclusively trust his judgment in deciding what should be released and what shouldn't. He was also making it clear that he wasn't exactly committed to disclosing "the worst" of the material "though the heavens fall".

In effect, as GG was telling the world that he could be trusted to manage the leaked information responsibly, he was also telling the world that it simply had to trust his judgment in this crucial role.

To me, there was clearly a subliminal message for both Western authorities and the public: don't worry, we're conscientious, patriotic leak-masters. We're not going to irresponsibly disclose anything too radical, or politically/socially destabilizing.

GG and the Omidyar Group have set themselves up as an independent "brand" in the new field of whistleblower/hacker impresario and leak-broker.

Like only buying NFL-approved merchandise, or fox-approved eggs, the public is being encouraged to only buy (into) Intercept-approved Snowden Leaks™. It's a going concern, which lends itself much more to the "modified limited hangout" approach than freely tossing all the biggest eggs out of the basket.

GG found an opportunity to augment his rising career as a self-made investigative journalist and civil-liberties advocate. Now he's sitting pretty, the celebrity point man for a lucrative modified limited hangout enterprise. What is wrong with this picture?

@16 I just see no evidence of that aside from fitting the narrative of people who are convinced of a cover up in leaked docs. Moreover, there is no way Russia would continue to offer Snowden asylum if he was gov agent. I’m sure Russian intelligence did a very thorough background check on him.

@17 that’s simply not true. He regularly tweets, gives online talks and publishes on his own. He has not used either Poitras or Greenwald as a means of communication for years. And he has never dropped a single hint of being disappointed or frustrated with how documents and info was published.

It just seems so implausible given the total lack of any sign of Snowden’s dissatisfaction.

@13
"Personally I like the win-win philosophies of China and Russian. It makes a lot more sense than the winner take all philosophy of capitalism IRT an expendable planet."
Well I do not. I cannot respect two powers with repressive governments, neoliberal to the extreme, which accept being blackmailed by the Tronald administration about North Korea - either you approve the 'sanctions' (i.e. war by other means) or there will be a war at your doorsteps - and thus expose another whole people to doom. The fact that the usa is the main problem on this planet, warmongering, destructive, arrogant and ignorant, in the advanced stage of political putrefaction, an aristocracy with ochlocratic elements, spreading ideas akin to fascism, should not lead to assume that the global opponents necessarily are the good ones. This is a mindless Manichean aproach. They are the lesser evil, but still an evil.

I have great respect for the reporting on this site regarding Syria and the Middle East. I regret that for some reason there is this dogmatic approach to the issue of Russian attempts to influence the US election. Why wouldn't the Russians try to sway the election? Allowing Hillary to win would have put a dangerous adversary in the White House, one with even more aggressive neocon tendencies than Obama. Trump has been owned by Russian mobsters since the the 1990s, and his ties to Russian criminals like Felix Sater are well known.

Putin thought that getting Trump in office would allow the US to go down a more restrained foreign policy path and lift sanctions against Russia, completely understandable goals. Using Facebook/Twitter bots and groups like Cambridge Analytica, an effort was made to sway public opinion toward Trump. That is just politics. And does anyone really doubt there are incriminating sexual videos of Trump out there? Trump (like Bill Clinton) was buddies with billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Of course there are videos of Trump that can be used for blackmail purposes, and of course they would be used to get him on board with the Russian plan.

The problem is that everything Trump touches dies. He's a fraud and an incompetent idiot. Always has been. To make matters worse, Trump is controlled by the Zionists through his Orthodox Jewish daughter and Israeli spy son-in-law. This gave power to the most openly extreme Zionist elements who will keep pushing for more war in the Middle East. And Trump is so vile that he's hated by the majority of Americans and doesn't have the political power to end sanctions against Russia.

Personally, I think this is all for the best. Despite his Zionist handlers, Trump will unintentionally unwind the American Empire through incompetence and lack of strategy, which allows Syria and the rest of the world to breathe and rebuild. So Russia may have made a bad bet on this guy being a useful ally, but his own stupidity will end up working out to the world's favor in the long run.

@18 g.. i don't know how double agents work or if snowden qualifies.. btw - i like your thinking @1, except the part about the nsa docs being bought back by cia.. to me that is completely conceivable... might not be the case, but i can imagine it.. bezos and omidyar seem like the type to be bought out easily..

The revelation that the sole Russiagate "evidence" was the so-called Steele Dossier - i.e. opposition research funded by the Clinton campaign - which was used by the intelligence community to not only begin the public assertions of Trump's perfidy but to then initiate FISA approved surveillance on the Trump campaign, that is truly astonishing. Instructive then that the NY Times, Washington Post, etc have yet to acknowledge these facts to their readers, and instead have effectively doubled down on the story, insisting that the Russiagate allegations are established fact and constitute "objective reality." That suggests this fake news story will continue indefinitely.

What we see here is these bastions of establishment thinking in the USA promoting "objective reality" as partisan - i.e. there is a Clinton reality versus a Trump reality, or a Russian reality versus a "Western" reality, facts and documentation be damned. This divorce from objectivity is a symptom of the overall decline of American institutions, an indicate a future hard, rather than soft, landing near the end of the road.

as for russia meddling in usa elections - sure, so long as it's also a given the usa meddles in russias and every other election process too.. the way i see it, you can't have the one without the other.. it's all played below the surface however.. trying to prove any of it seems like a fools game and frankly, why bother?

G @ 1 and 18: My understanding is that Edward Snowden has been advised (warned?) by the Russian government or his lawyer in Moscow not to reveal any more than he has said so far. The asylum Moscow has offered him may be dependent on his keeping discreet. That may include not saying much about The Intercept, in case his communications are followed by the NSA or any other of the various US intel agencies which could lead to their tracking his physical movements in Russia and enable any US-connected agent or agency (including one based in Russia) to trace him, arrest him or kill him, and cover up and frame the seizure or murder in such a way as to place suspicion or blame on the Russian government or on local criminal elements in Russia.

I believe that Snowden does have a job in Russia and possibly this job does not permit him the time to say any more than what he currently tweets or says online.

There is nothing in MoA's article to suggest that Glenn Greenwald is deliberately burying stories in The Intercept. B has said that its management is chaotic which could suggest among other things that Greenwald himself is dissatisfied with its current operation.

@21 I'm not disputing that moneyed interests might have been leaned on by the CIA to stop publishing sensitive info. What I'm disputing is the idea that people like Greenwald have deliberately with-held information that is in the public interest. I doubt that, regardless of the strength of the Intercept as a publication.

@25 What interest would the Russian gov have in helping protect NSA? I assume Russia loves the idea of the US Intel agencies being embarrassed. Snowden speaks his mind about plenty of domestic and international events in US. I have never seen him act like he's being censored.

@20 there is considerable irony in use of "dogmatic" here: the dogma actually occurs in the rigid authoritarian propaganda that the Russians Putin specifically interfered with the election itself, which now smugly blankets any discussion. "The Russians interfered" is now dogma, when that statement is not factually shown, and should read, "allegedly interfered."

The dogma does not come from questioning this conclusion. Because Putin, during the campaign, complimented Trump, does not support the conclusion with its insinuation that those who voted for Trump needed to be influenced by anything other than being fed up with the usual in American politics. Same with Brexit. That dissatisfaction continues, and it doesn't need Russian influence to feed it. This is infantile oversimplification to say so.

To suggest "possibly" in any argument does not provide evidence. There is no evidence. Take a look at b's link to the following for a clear, sane assessment of what's going on. As with:

"The centrepiece of the faith, based on the hacking charge, is the belief that Vladimir Putin orchestrated an attack on American democracy by ordering his minions to interfere in the election on behalf of Trump. The story became gospel with breathtaking suddenness and completeness. Doubters are perceived as heretics and as apologists for Trump and Putin, the evil twins and co-conspirators behind this attack on American democracy. Responsibility for the absence of debate lies in large part with the major media outlets. Their uncritical embrace and endless repetition of the Russian hack story have made it seem a fait accompli in the public mind. It is hard to estimate popular belief in this new orthodoxy, but it does not seem to be merely a creed of Washington insiders. If you question the received narrative in casual conversations, you run the risk of provoking blank stares or overt hostility – even from old friends. This has all been baffling and troubling to me; there have been moments when pop-culture fantasies (body snatchers, Kool-Aid) have come to mind."

China and Russia have their own security reasons to oppose a nuclearized Korean Peninsula, and have publicly stated so long before this issue became the global hot topic. China and Russia supported UN sanctions on their own accord, and were reputed to have substantially watered down the original US proposal prior to the UNSC vote. To think that either of them would succumb to US blackmail of bringing war to their doorsteps is simply laughable. In 1950 China was judged to stand zero chance of winning against the mighty US-led advance across the 38th Degree and they yet plunged in. Today the US is judged to stand zero chance of winning against China at its doorstep and you think China cowered?

If Tronald makes a threat that either China stops all developments in South China Seas or else war will be brought to its doorstep, and China obeys, or if Tronald demands Russia to clear out of Crimea and Russia complies, then your theory of China/Russia voted in fear of America would take on some credibility.

but to tell the truth, those videos/photos of barton gelman smashing their hard drives w/ the ‘snowden files’ on them always struck me as an epic theatrical ruse. but please add to the intercept’s ‘fearless reporting’ maz hussain’s high praise of the white helmets, as did amy goodman, of course. maz alo did a major hit on julian assange, and i was pleased to see the commentariat generally in solidarity w/ him and wikiLeaks. oh, and that quarter of a billion Pierre bucks didn’t last long: TI begs for your dollars to keep the truth coming, or what.ev.er, although in general i avoid clicking into the ugly, in your face visually...site.

“Much had changed since the foundation was formed. Today it has a $1.5 million annual budget and a staff of 15. Taking donations for WikiLeaks and other groups has become only a tiny part of the foundation’s work. In 2013, for example, the foundation took over development of SecureDrop, an open-source tool designed to make it safer for whistleblowers to submit information to reporters.
Under the foundation’s stewardship, SecureDrop today is running in dozens of newsrooms, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, and Bloomberg.” (also politico, huffpo, says GG via RT in what may have been another theatrical production, who can say?)who knows what other stenographers to the Imperium?)

and of course they did cut WL loose a week or so later, and he'd responded via pastebin; trevor tim kinda/sorta responded. 'haven', haven't a clue, myownself, save for what some folks say about android. but snowden's lab seems well-equipped. at least i think it's inside the Tweetie.

Russiagate and corporate media scapegoating Putin's trolls are information operations to keep the little people misinformed. The Ukraine Putsch and the MH-17 shoot down were handled poorly by Russia. They’ve come back in Syria. Russian intelligence wouldn’t be doing their job if they weren’t surveilling the West. Victoria Nuland’s EU rant was released. Vladimir Putin preferred Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. What got western oligarchs upset is the disclosure of the truth; the system is rigged. Obama voters in mid-America voted for Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton’s loss triggered a witch hunt rather than addressing the root causes of her defeat.

A group of oligarchs want the upstart NY casino boss gone. The only question is what will be the collateral damage from the mob war.

G @ 25: Moscow would have no interest in helping protect the NSA or any other US intel agency. The Russians would have advised Snowden not to say more than he has said so far, not because they are interested in helping the NSA but because they can only protect him as long as he is discreet and does not try to say or publish any more that would jeopardise his safety or give Washington an excuse to pressure Moscow to extradite him back to the US. That would include placing more sanctions on Russia until Snowden is given up.

There is the possibility also that Snowden trusts (or trusted) Greenwald to know what to do with the NSA documents. Perhaps that trust was naively placed - we do not know.

Snowden is "the squirrel over there!" A distraction turned into a hope.
Compared to Assange, who is being slow-martyred in captivity, Snowden is a boy playing with gadgets.

Why did not Snowden make certain a copy of his theft went to Wikileaks? That would have been insurance.
Since he did not, it all could be just a distraction.

What is known about the Snowden affair is we received proof of what we knew. Not much else. For those who didn't know, they received news.
And ever since, the shape of things from the Deep State/Shadow Government/IC has been lies and warmongering against American freedoms and world cooperation among nations.

Fascism is corporate + the police state. The US government is a pure fascist tyranny that also protects the Empire and Global Hegemony.

We connect the dots and it's always the same picture. It was this way in the 60s,70s,80s,90s, 00s, and this forlorn decade.
Fascism more bold each decade. Billionaires and millionaires have always been in the mix.

The irony and hypocrisy as well as the buffoonery of the US Beltway Junta is certainly in full display with it's latest Russophobe allegation of election tampering. Put aside all the obvious items such as, zero evidence, US elections are already rigged by the US elites before a single vote is cast, the US has been tampering in just about every countries elections for decades overtly and covertly- and just consider the more recent attempt BY THE US to tamper in Russian elections through the ever-handy NED.

With the insertion of Alexei Navalny, a well-known USA/Wall St. stooge who learned his chops at Yale University as a fellow of the Greenberg World Fellows Program, into the Russian political landscape the US State Department certainly is interfering with Russian politics. Navalny was involved directly in founding a movement funded by the US government

The "Democratic Alternative" (AKA DA!) front group that Nalvany "co-founded" was fully funded (and created) by the US State Department's National Endowment for Democracy (irony alert).

That Navalny is supported by hard right reactionaries pretending to be populists should set off alarms but worse this is a clear case of US meddling in the electoral politics (another irony alert) of Russia.

But yes, of course, let's Call it Democracy and have some pretend outrage in the US Propaganda Sector where the US Chattering Classes are aghast that Russia won't allow the NED to interfere in it's elections.

I echo you opinion that this site gives great reports on issues pertaining to Syria and the ME. Credit to b.

On your surmise that Putin prefers Trump to Hillary and would thus have incentive to influence the election, I beg to differ. Putin is one smart statesman; he knows very well it makes no difference which candidates gets elected in US elections. Any candidate that WOULD make a difference would NEVER see the daylight of nomination, especially at the presidential level. I myself believe all the talk of Russia interfering the 2016 Election is no more than a witch hunt.

But I do believe Putin, and for that matter Xi Jinping of China too, should make efforts to infiltrate the USA election processes. It's an eye for an eye. USA has been exercising its free hands in manipulating elections and stirring up color revolutions all around the world, including the 2012 presidential election in Russia. They should be given a taste of their own medicine. In fact, I believe it is for this reason that the US MSM is playing up this hocus pocus Russian-gate matter, as a preemptive measure to justify imposing electioneering controls in the future.

USA may not be vulnerable as yet to this kind of external nuisances, as the masses have not yet reached the stage of being easily stirred. But that time will come.

Not to mention the featured commenters on there are there pronto after the story is posted with two-line witticisms. Not only conspicuous, but boring to read. It is an echo-chamber of hyper-libertarian claptrap for a laugh. Kudos to them, but one wonders what you might have in common with them outside of being anti-MIC. I guess I just don't sit at that table.

But their format and advertisment. YUCK! Thanks be to b for keeping the interface here so damn fresh and clean.

The US Government was controlling media well before the CIA's creation. Please take a little time to learn about George Seldes whose 1929 book You Can't Print That!: The Truth Behind the News, 1918–1928 is vastly informative with original copies easy to find under $15, or even online through this link. Indeed, numerous works of his are digitized. I.F. Stone followed in Seldes's footsteps, and the website with his collected writings is here. Perhaps one of the least known episodes of US Government media manipulation was related to the atomic bomb crimes, an event nearly 100% airbrushed from history books, and of course the ongoing attempt to cover up one of the biggest crimes of all time.

My mention of media manipulation by the US Government wouldn't be complete without including the 100% blackout that was to apply to the discussions in Philadelphia that led to the 1787 Constitution--the document that elevated the "natural aristocracy" into the catbird seat ensuring their control of the federal government until it's overthrown via revolution. Fortunately, Madison and others kept copious notes that were eventually published long after the fate of Commoners was sealed, so we know that Aristocracy viewed its contemporary deplorables no differently than how HRC and today's 1% view them/us.

Americans and much of the rest of the world are the target of an immense psyop . Propaganda techniques going back to Bernay and WWI have been expanded on and perfected. Infiltration and control is lot limited to the print media and TV news stations but also , hollywood movies/TV shows , academia (history, economics, etc) , book publishing, blogs and social media. The last few bastions of truth will be eliminated with the end of net neutrality.

As former CIA Director William Casey allegedly once said: "We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” His error here was saying Americans were the target and not the global population as well, but at least as far as America goes I think its pretty much a thumbs up. Mission Accomplished.

...i think that publication gets put out once a month they wanted it to sound fresh and new!

Posted by:james | Dec 26, 2017 7:34:01 PM | 45

Well, in that case, if it is to be "fresh" they should publish the article just in the first minutes of January 2018, but I can not understand how is that they publish an aritcle today ( or you go to see if not days before ) dating it for Jan 4th 2018....Sounds quite suspicious and even fraudulent, doesn´t it? Independently of the deepeness and greatness of the article....
I guess that these things only happen in the AngloUS world....

"We do not know what the billionaires get for their service. The CIA surely has many ways to let them gain information on their competition or to influence business regulations in foreign countries. One hand will wash the other."

Something I have often thought about. Media and social media tycoons - all could be taken down very fast if they did not toe the CIA line, though for most, it seems their work with CIA is voluntary and enthusiastic.
I guess you don't get that rich by having ethics or scruples.

re 33 "Why did not Snowden make certain a copy of his theft went to Wikileaks? That would have been insurance. Since he did not, it all could be just a distraction."
I agree, for when I saw Snowden had not sent even a copy to Wikileaks but had instead entrusted the info to Greenwald the former(?) gay porn promoter I judged him a pawn and his "revelations" bunk.

thank you, James, reminder, the article is linked to by b, in his opening remarks for this thread. As to the date, it's a longstanding tradition for monthly mags to release ahead of the official pub dates--sales related.

I have not payed enough attention to the Russiagate issue or any other collaterals of The Donald´s election like Pizzagate or other US "gates", since all seems to me theater, smoke and mirrors and squid strategy.
Anyway, just around the election campaign, I got to know ( and test ) what the real intentions of some players in the, let´s say, "truth-seeking internet world" could be. Whatever the aim explained for the beginning of their "adventure" in the net, I found that almost three actors supporters of The Donald, and still supporting, started their media outlets around year 2007, what could be deemed a long term operation...

Then the other day I was searching for some information and, adn aways happen in the net, got by casuality to the page of a certain John Robles II who has a lot of information ( to read along several days/weeks ,)especially on the Wikileaks/Snowden issue, and so on. One of the things I read there was an email interchange amongst D.Trump Jr and Assange during the lection campaign on not publishing the tax reports of the former´s father ( which Assange obvioulsy had in his hands )asking for something in reward....The guy, JARII, was also indicating that in case Snowden would be a real whistleblower, he would be already dead, and that his mission in Russia is more in conection to infiltrating media and organizations, or recruiting actives so that subverting them to advance the goals of the US there.

The thing is that this guy, JARII, is a former "Voice of Russia" journalist, and, coincidentaly, I also read the other day an ariticle which I poste at Fort Russ ( and right now I can not find ) about how "Voice of Russia" and Ria Novosti had been so infiltrated by foreign agents that all the orientation of the news had been tunred around completely, leading to the recent decree signed by the very Putin on the closing of these two historical Russian media..( well, even my grandfather during the Spanish Civil War was auditor of Radio Moscow.... ).

Well, I really do not know what to do about all that, but, I mayself have made my idea on the same sense about both Snowden and Assange....

It's very difficult to get the head wrapped around the Mueller investigation as a contrivance to avoid going after Clinton, which shows a corrupted intelligence service working for political ends and saving the Democratic Party, which needs replacing. The evidence against Clinton is much more substantial than the continuing Mueller foray into inconsequence. If you need more on Clinton beyond the massive email problems she had to avoid revealing how much pay money she was getting, search on the DNC convention entirely corrupted over to her and then the Uranium One deal. Why is all this not being investigated? It should be Clinton-Gate not Russia-Gate. It seems that once again, as with late 02 and into 03, the populace has been hoodwinked into believing government falseness--as with the non-existent WMD and invasion of Iraq.

@NemesisCalling #36
‘Kudos to them, but one wonders what you might have in common with them outside of being anti-MIC. I guess I just don't sit at that table.’

really, at least GG isn't. remember when he wouldn't name 'country x' and Wikileaks did? this is the least biased piece i could find, but he cared far more about the aghans about to get assassinated by drones than those targeting them.

Snowden went to established journalists because he wanted the story to get out. He also wanted them to be cautious and conservative, to redact whatever seemed damaging to operations or his country.

In my opinion, what the journalists did worked. And Snowden destroyed his own access to the materials.

My guess - purely a guess - is that Snowden was, and remains, quite satisfied with what happened and what got published. He never wanted operational FACTS to get out so much as he wanted the SCALE of what the US was doing to get out. In this matter, I'd call his entire effort a tremendous success.

Snowden's face and story went around the world and shook things up. Paradigms came crashing down. In my own personal case, the Snowden material showed me the scale of US adventurism, and the vast audacity of its criminality. It made it clear, in philosophical terms rather than evidentiary terms, that 9/11 could easily be an inside job. It took a change in the paradigms of the scale of corruption to open up that possibility for me. I'm sure it's done similar things for millions of people. Snowden was one of the few events I can think of that actually played out in the mainstream before anyone figured out how to shut it down - and the genie was out of the bottle.

We don't know what we've lost by not having the missing pages released. But I find it hard to think they could change paradigms any more than has already happened. There's a diminishing return here. Wikileaks publishes troves of material, but what paradigms get changed unless it plays in the mainstream? Manning with the video of the mercs shooting the civilians was the last time this happened, I think.

When it comes to seeing what's behind the curtain - which is precisely what the information war is about - the words and the details of the stories matter far less than the way that people's thinking gets changed.

~~

At Christmas I socialized with ordinary people. I learned that they believe the Russians interfered in the US election, and planted Trump. Bummer, but on the other hand, I could talk to everyone about the NSA getting my Facebook feed or my phone data, and there's full agreement, or at least no disagreement.

Snowden went into the culture. Russiagate is still playing out, and we don't yet know who will be the big loser in the belief system of the culture. I'm still willing to bet it's the mainstream media.

~~

Putin has said that Snowden didn't reveal anything that Russian intelligence didn't already know. Russia didn't want to harbor Snowden, but the US State Department forced the issue by revoking his passport while he was in the air terminal in Russia. The current asylum granted is for a 3-year period. I see no reason to make any change in this. It will be reviewed when it expires, and if Snowden is still a stateless political refugee, which seems very likely, than I imagine it will be renewed. Russia is a nation of laws.

Russia has little to do with Snowden. And even less to do with the US elections. Russia doesn't want confrontation, between anyone. Russia wants a world of no conflict, and every action it takes pursues this end. Russia will easily forego a cheap victory in order to gain a valuable cessation of hostilities. I believe Putin when he says that who won the US election was of no great importance to Russia - they would deal with whomever was there.

It's always important to understand that Russia is not playing a zero-sum game, nor is she playing to "win" against any other nation in geopolitics. Russia wins when other nations stop fighting. The lat thing she wants to do is interfere with the internal order of other countries. But she is rooting for the orderliness of each country.

There are plenty of rumours flying around about him - arrested and being interrogated at Camp David as part of Trump's 'take-down' of the so-called 'Deep State', just had a heart attack! But what is the truth?

b said:" Its simply obfuscation to justify their call for more political and military measures against Russia. This again to distract from the real reasons Clinton lost the election and to introduce a new Cold War for the benefit of weapon producers and U.S. influence in Europe."

IMO absolutely true.

Did Russia meddle in our elections? Yep, but then, the U$A meddles in other countries elections also. Did their meddling change the election results? I doubt it. Clinton's arrogance did that, in spades. Truth be told, I think the Clinton's are
quite happy with things just as they are.

Thanks for your nice long comment and its excellent observations. And Happy Holidays since I haven't wished them on you yet this year!

For me, Snowden's revelations were nothing new as I had already learned about Project Echelon, which by the end of the 1980s was global girding and mostly intent on industrial espionage as this summary at the link informs:

"The ECHELON program was created in the late 1960s to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War, and was formally established in 1971.[5][6]

"By the end of the 20th century, the system referred to as "ECHELON" had allegedly evolved beyond its military and diplomatic origins, to also become '…a global system for the interception of private and commercial communications' (mass surveillance and industrial espionage)."

Indeed, the extent of Echelon was available to the public--sort of--but there were very few publications about it, although that changed as the internet grew during the 1990s. So for me, Snowden's actions becoming headline news was more important than the content of his revelations as the slumbering public got slapped upside its collective head.

Another historical factoid of interest is FDR's meeting with media CEOs a few days prior to 7 Dec 1941, of which no transcript exists to my knowledge, although what was said can be inferred by subsequent actions by all the actors involved--there was no, zero, deviation from the official government line about the Day of Infamy, which was a prelude to media portrayal on 911.

Fundamentally, the bottom line is whenever interests between national governments diverge from those of their public, governments will lie every time--those two sets of policy HRC admitted she had for public versus private consumption. Although it's too soon to be certain, it appears that the leadership of Russia and China have learned the difficult lesson that the best policy is for the national government to be in sync with the interests of its citizenry, thus the philosophical adoption of Win/Win versus the Outlaw US Empire's Zero Sum game, which forms the basis for our ongoing Hybrid Third World War.

My favorite pet peeve is Bernays. Even those who are aware of his deplorable actions, seldom grasp just how devastating his selling out of the human psyche to corporations and the NSA/CIA really turned out to be. The man hated the masses and short of calling them 'useless eaters', he saw them solely as means to corporate profits.
His legacy is a citizen without any other rights than that to "go shopping".

Go Ask Alice tells us the latest story about how much the surveillance has advanced. The article is about some content provider with unknown identity. The core message though is about the NSA/FBI/CIA going after anybody that comments on the internet, provided certain keywords are triggered. While that has been known since Snowden, the masses suffer from short term memory loss. Any dissent to the establishment is noted. This proves that there is no more rule of common law and nothing resembling a democracy by a far shot. A Plutocratic dictatorship determined to destroy anybody that poses a threat to its existence.

@ forest... you are really disqualifying any interest on my part in reading your posts! if that'ss what you'e hoping for, it's now worked on me!

@ sid2. thanks.. i often neglect to hit all the links in b's fantastic posts! thanks for drawing my attention to that one.. ditto your comment on mags release data.. that is how i understand it too.

@55 sid2.. yes - clinton-gate as opposed to russia-gate, but obviously the powers that be have a different game plan.. good comments. thanks.

@ 57 grieved.. thanks for your ongoing thoughtful posts.. i like how you have described snowden and i mostly agree. i still think questions are helpful to ask, even if we don't know the answers.. nothing is certain on so many topics.. i like your speculation on who will be the big loser in the belief system of the culture - media.. that would be nice, but i very much doubt it.. only if a direct link can be shown would that happen.. bezos owning wapo or the fellow who owns intercept ought to be a red flag for anyone taking info from those outlets, but they all seem corrupted from my pov.. i would like to see the neo cons the big losers, probably right alongside the financial system advisors.. i can dream, lol.

@64 karlof1.. interesting comments of which i was unaware "FDR's meeting with media CEOs a few days prior to 7 Dec 1941".. i do believe what you say though, even into 2017 - "no, zero, deviation from the official government line".. sure looks like the gov't line is the financial and industrial military complex corporate line at this point..

@66
"What would be the most sinister scenario in regards to Snowden and the NSA leak?"

That General Hayden gets his wish and kills Snowden. That's the most sinister.

If you meant, intrigue, double agent or useful idiot sort of thing, well, Snowden had no intention of running to China and definitely not to Russia.
The Intel Agencies would have loved if he ran straight to Moscow. But it didn't happen. So,we sort of know he wasn't "used". He was "allowed" because they had it covered when he handed off the purloined data.

What sort of encrypted communication did he use on that trip to Hong Kong? They knew what he was doing.
They tried for it to be an out-and-out treason case. Remember that they insisted the Chinese in Beijing had it all?
They they tried to generate the same with Russia and Putin when he landed in Moscow.

I find him to be a useful tool for everyone who wants something out of his adventure. People who think he's a hero have their hero. People who want him dead probably have some contract out on him. And others want him to be returned and prosecuted like Timothy McVeigh and executed.

Grieved indicated above @57, Snowden was in our culture now. He's an asterisk. Compare him to Daniel Ellsberg. You cannot. Ellsberg forced the country against the war machine, forced the NYTimes to grow a set of balls and publish the Papers, and he won against the Deep State who tried to destroy him. All the while he stood like a man of courage and didn't scurry around and lateral the papers off. They got published. He faced down the system and won a huge First Amendment battle.

I chalk up the differences as Snowden is a kid with a keyboard. Assange and Ellsberg are men. The latter really matter. Snowden is a very light symbol, at best. He embarrassed NSA and only exists today because of Putin and Russian values.

I guess Vietnam was the great Evil, and surveillance just doesn't match up against what that charnel house of napalm, carpet bombing, white phosphorus, Agent Orange and Agent Blue, Phoenix Program assassinations became.

I guess it may be more like the original Wachowski brothers Matrix plot (read on 'net so real or imagined), where all the visuals of a rebellion against the Matrix is streamed by the Matrix through the Matrix, just giving Neo his (its) pipe dreams.

An alternative haircut candidate of hope is initialized, to fight Agent Smith the next second. We cheer him as the true, or false, neo; in the meantime, anything strikingly different by the State Department?

The original 3 TV Networks were started by Intelligence figures. When the Church Committee documented that all 3 were controlled by the Rockefellers, Senator Nelson Rockefeller was able to limit the GPO printing of the report to less than 100 copies.
Time Warner was govt & military intelligence controlled since its founding in 1923 by Henry Luce, a Yale Skull & Bones guy from an intelligence family. His father was a spy in China pretending to be a missionary.

The German journalist Udo Ulfkotte wrote a book, Bought Journalists, in which he reported that every significant European journalist functions as a CIA asset.

It became even worse during the Clinton regime when six mega-media companies were permitted to acquire 90% of the US print, TV, radio, and entertainment media, a concentration that destroyed diversity and independence. Today the media throughout the Western world serves as a Propaganda Ministry for Washington. The Western media is Washington’s Ministry of Truth.

At the top it isn't the case that the CIA controls the media; rather that the board of directors is named by the banksters and mega-rich. Like all the mega-corps, they are thoroughly controlled by the Usurpers. The CIA has always been their private police force for intell & enforcement at home and abroad.

To rule a world requires control of military force, of money, information, energy, and the elimination of private property. Everything else is distraction. Probably the end of net neutrality is important. The coming global digital money is catastrophic. Agenda 21 is the global dictatorship, and is already decreasing private property-- among other things. https://geopolitics.co/2015/04/09/the-true-purpose-of-agenda-21/ I recommend the video within it.

@73 Mark - I cannot understand why Snowden doesn't have another copy to give to Wikileaks.

This is a crucial point. Edward Snowden chose not to possess the files after he had handed them off to the journalists. He wiped out his copy when they started to publish them. This was a deliberate choice, and part of an entire ethical view that Snowden held of the situation he was in, and the situation he had created.

If you can't understand why he held this view, then you have to ask him, or study his words. But rest assured that he didn't simply "fail" to have a backup copy in case his journalists chickened out or sold out their commitment. He was a geek. He wasn't a journalist. He wanted sensible journalists to handle the lifetime scoop that he was holding. In my view, he made an incredibly good choice.

Put yourself in his shoes. The path he had already walked just to get those files to those real-world journalists in Hong Kong was already a thousand times longer than anything that could possibly lie in front of him. All this talk about assets - like you can keep this kind of thing going: the man lived a lifetime in a few short years and did the best thing he could ever have conceived of.

He earned the space to delete the files and sit back for a while and watch things happen. He said he wanted the public to know, and the public to discuss - if he was wrong, so be it, but it was for the public to discuss, he always said.

Everything I've written here may not be true. But if it is true, then on the basis of this narrative of events, no one has any right to ask anything more of Snowden. He was the messenger who put his body in the circuit to complete the signal. We all gained. He gained nothing, except satisfaction of mission accomplished.

For me that's where his story ends. Greenwald, Intercept, oligarchs, slavery - these are all another story, and one that I'm focused on. But I choose to honor Snowden for the bravery of what he seems to have done, and if true that achievement scored so high that no amount of falling short can diminish it.

sure sounds like Alice Donovan is a creation of Whatever Dumb Ass Committee of Morons paid by my hard-earned tax dollars to pretend to be pushing subversive news from The Enemy Country That Won't Bow Before US/Israeli Commands. It would explain the copy & paste writing style. I hope Counterpunch (at least) throws them a curve ball.
I usually feel bad about the wasted lives and suffering this shitty US empire causes, but this kind of thing makes me feel bad about how much money is wasted also.

78
Snowden confirmed the NSA files held by shadow brokers as genuine. How many years after destroying his copies? Snowden worked in US intelligence, perhaps just as a geek, but I don't see him destroying the only weapon he has against them.

I haven't read here any discussion of the movie, SNOWDEN, produced by Oliver Stone. I saw it when it first came out. Is it on Netflix or other outlets yet? As movies go it fell short of a documentary. That said, it provides yet another potential thin-edge-of-a-wedge thought for the zombies that live among us.

The neurofeedback treatment that I am up to 132 session of has healed many people like Edward Snowden (with his reported epilepsy) and I hope he gets such soon in his life; us old folks are harder to heal. One of neurofeedback earliest successes was a woman with epilepsy who after being healed went out and got a drivers license.....can't find the source but this was 30-40 years ago

I consider Snowden to be a true American patriot. The American values that I was taught are in stark contrast to those exhibited by the God of Mammon cabal in control today. I don't believe that we are a bad species but sorely misdirected by something that can be "easily" changed. Look at the progress we have made as a species. Why do we let ourselves be limited in our development by centuries old conventions about who controls the tools of finance? How many wars would there be if money was a public utility?

What more revelations of Snowden's archive could possibly make any difference? It is already basically understood that the NSA, its contractors, and 5 eyes agencies "collect it all" illegally, with no meaningful oversight, to the degree that social media became their accomplice and extension, that they abuse this power and the constitution proudly and with impunity for any purposes and justifications they see fit, and so on, and the vast majority of citizens cower, or delude themselves with some comforting trust that it won't be used against them.

It has only proven that nothing will snap the majority ignorance from its coma.
No one with any voice - even those involved seem able to comprehend how vastly and deeply this will effect the free will of people, culture, and society - for that matter how it already has progressed to do so.

In the wake of the retroactive telcom immunity (which by definition is an admission of blatant criminality and conspiracy by and between both government and telcom corporations) The Snowden revalations couldn't have been more explicit, signifiacnt, or urgent. The people did nothing. Those minor percentage of us who bother to read and understand what is happening can chatter and pontificate all we want, because the ignorant majority hasn't the interest or energy to question the status quo. (they absoloutely have not the attention span to read a single Greenwald article) So really I can understand why there is no point releaseing the rest.

Snowden was the one upholding his oath to the constitution, against whose who systematically violated it, and he is called a traitor.

As far as RussiaGate being some sort of distraction from this - no more than a distraction from any other meaningful information that SHOULD be on people's minds.

Regrettably, Moon of Alabama has not spotted what all major government intelligence agencies have known for a couple of years now ... European intel agency report - 'Edward Snowden & Glenn Greenwald are CIA frauds'
...
[copy of a Veterans Today nonsense piece deleted - b.]

Snowden didn't "destroy" anything. He gave it all to Greenwald in Hong Kong.
That way, nobody could coerce or otherwise intimidate him; as there were no files in his possesion.
Snowden himself clearly stated this fact.
That he landed in Russia is entirely the fault of the U.S. government (such as it is) by cancelling Snowden's passport enroute; this becomes ancient history in today's world...

the Snowden('snowed in') saga is yet to be written, or perhaps, like much verity, will NEVER be written. eluding the intelligence hounds for a couple of weeks while shooting a nice HD video with a couple of prominent journalists never passed my smell test...

,,,

...and what might seem a minor quibble with Grieved's:

Manning with the video of the mercs shooting the civilians was the last time this happened, I think

It is always great to meet or read people who know the real whole stuff. Even better if they present their knowledge in a way then enables or helps the dear reader to check it a bit. To be forced to believe it or not is quite humiliating.

I agree that the Snowden info was the paradym changer that showed to me in unmistakable imagery,
that my country was an outlaw nation hellbent on economic empire and had shifted from liberty to total
Control mechanisms.

The Snowden info together with the missing 28 pages from the 911 committee findings sent me on a
truth mission; reading everything from "CIA Rouges Killed JFK, Russ Baker's book on the Bush
family, to Fahrenheit 911.

This former Neocon keeps trying to wash himself in the pure waters of the truth but cannot wash clean his guilt
for once voting for and defending such trash.

So I continue reading sites like MOA and others seeking the truth and speaking out to those in my life.

I agree that the Snowden info was the paradym changer that showed to me in unmistakable imagery,
that my country was an outlaw nation hellbent on economic empire and had shifted from liberty to total
Control mechanisms

On your surmise that Putin prefers Trump to Hillary and would thus have incentive to influence the election, I beg to differ. Putin is one smart statesman; he knows very well it makes no difference which candidates gets elected in US elections.

I accept your point that the Democrats and the Republicans are two sides of the same coin, but it's important to understand that Putin is deeply conservative and very risk averse. Hillary Clinton may be a threat to Russia but she knows the "rules" and is very predictable, while Trump doesn't know the rules and appears to act on a whim, so if Putin were to have interfered in the 2016 presidential election, logic would suggest that he would do so on Hillary Clinton's side. However, given the problems that Hillary Clinton had to overcome to get elected, backing her against Trump would be risky. So the highly risk averse Putin would logically stay out of the election entirely and all the claims of Russia hacking the election are fake news.

As for the alleged media campaign, my response is "so what!". Western media, including state-owned media, interferes around the world all the time so complaining about Russian state-owned media doing the same is pure hypocrisy and should be ignored.

Why there is not more attention to the outright sham of the investigation is not clear to me. The Mueller case re election peddling rests entirely on the Steele dossier, now shown to be false. Instead, Mueller is going after unrelated matters in Trump re Russian business deals, or matters taking place AFTER the election, or stupidly investigating Jill Stein for attending a dinner with Putin present.

Is the investigation a sham? Most of what you read about it is supposition coming from partisan reporters working for partisan newspapers. The actual facts are few and far between.

Manafort was clearly influence-peddling but for Turkey and a Ukrainian oligarch.

Flynn clear did lie but his actions, requesting Russia delay a response to the expulsion of diplomat and that Russia block a resolution against Israel, appear not to be of themselves illegal.

Trump Jr holding a meeting with a Maltese professor of international relations, a Russian criminal lawyer and a "niece" of Putin who wasn't in fact a niece of Putin was neither here nor there unless Trump Jr. lied to the FBI.

There is no evidence that the Steele dossier corroborates any of the above acts, but if the Obama regime really used it to get a FISA warrant then that needs to be investigated. Even the author of the dossier admits it might be 30% wrong.

As for Jill Stein, it's news to me that Mueller is investigating her when it seems to be some Democrats in the Senate who are doing so.

There have been a lot of "leaks" about the Mueller investigation but most reports suggest none of the leaks come from the investigation itself which seems to be watertight. It's a matter of waiting and seeing what comes out later and that Trump has claimed he has no intention of sacking Mueller suggests that those who expect major revelations of a conspiracy between Putin and Trump are going to be disappointed. And nobody can then say that they weren't warned.

Any idea where my long post elaborating about Breitbart as the original source of "fake-journalism" and meddling into US elections and thus, the real culprits of the whole Russiagate>/i> issue, with some excerpts translated from an interesting report on Bannon, has gone? I would like to know...

Brabantian @ 83, Yes, the huge amount of publicity given Snowden was an obvious tip-off that he is a hoax. All other whistleblowers get no publicity at all. Plus, everything that Snowden "disclosed" was already known. Perhaps he's out there to give credibility to lies as yet untold. Already his "asylum" promotes the fiction of East vs West opposition. It is a play and we are the audience, stuck in Plato's cave.

He argued that he had helped American national security by prompting a badly needed public debate about the scope of the intelligence effort. “The secret continuance of these programs represents a far greater danger than their disclosure,” he said. He added that he had been more concerned that Americans had not been told about the N.S.A.’s reach than he was about any specific surveillance operation.

“So long as there’s broad support amongst a people, it can be argued there’s a level of legitimacy even to the most invasive and morally wrong program, as it was an informed and willing decision,” he said. “However, programs that are implemented in secret, out of public oversight, lack that legitimacy, and that’s a problem. It also represents a dangerous normalization of ‘governing in the dark,’ where decisions with enormous public impact occur without any public input.”
Pffffft.

Zo, will congress renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Section 702 when they’re back in town?

Yes, if they pass either of those versions of the mass surrvelliance law some of us would find more liberty in any country other than the US. Of course, getting into some of those countries to stay would be near impossible with an exodus from the new USSA. Begs the question, will the wall be for keeping us in or keeping the "riffraff" out?